News

Art Choice

From the 1950s to the early 1960s, Delaney studied and worked in continental Europe, where he encountered sculptors including Giacomo Manzu and Emilio Greco, who profoundly influenced his work. On his return to Ireland, Delaney was entrusted with major public commissions and lauded for his modernist style, which he combined with subjects from Irish history and legend, such as Cuchulann. The disparity between his abstract works, which recall the works of Giacometti or Lynn Chadwick, and his more representational pieces in this retrospective of his 1960s work can be explained partly in terms of the constraints of public commissions. Delaney bridged the gap between representational and abstract work in his sculptures, such as Reaching Figure, left, and drawings, and also that between high and popular culture, with his engagement with Irish history, exemplified in his Wolfe Tone monument, complemented by his illustrations for album covers for the Chieftains